Love the Music!

This weekend I decided it was time to get a few more toys for Alli. I can't remember the last time I actually went toy shopping for her - not even for her first birthday! (Shhh!!) So Alli and I went to Target to get some things. She's been interested in coloring/writing, so I got her one of those coloring books with special markers so they only write on the coloring book. Wow - expensive! So we started with just 1. And I got her a little travel etcha-sketch. That's a nice easy doodler without having to worry about her coloring everything in the house. I also wanted to get her some musical toys. Well, I might have gotten a little carried away in that department... I really only got her 3 things but...

I got her a drum that when you hit it, it says a letter of the alphabet. It has an English and a Spanish mode. It also has different modes that you can just create music, or make it sound like different drums... And I got her a little xylophone. I like it because it not only has an attached hammer, but it also has buttons that you can hit and they hit the keys from the underside. And then I got her this percussion set... It's a drum (that actually comes with a strap so you can march with it), a harmonica, a tambourine, and some little whistle flute thing. (No, not a recorder flute. It's round. Weird.)

Anyway I put the percussion set in my closet so that she could play with it while we're busy in the bathroom. What I found is she doesn't play with it by herself, but we sure do have fun making music with all of us sitting on the floor in my closet! haha She likes hitting the drum and the tambourine with the sticks (she's got good form!) and she likes handing me the harmonica and then taking it away to give me the little flute thing. It's fun.

In her bedroom, she likes to bang the drum that does the alphabet. But what I noticed is that she hits the drum so that the music starts and then she walks away and plays with other toys. When the drum stops (the automatic shutoff), she walks over, hits it a couple of times til the music starts again, and then walks away. I guess she likes having music in the background as she plays. I find it quite humorous myself.

Alli & Daddy

Notice Alli playing with a cell phone - just like Daddy!

A Couple More Words I had Forgotten...

How could I forget these words:

Hi
Milk (although this one is really hard to understand)
"all done"
And of course "uh-oh".

I'm sure she has more but they aren't discernable. :)

Alli's Vocabulary

I thought I would jot down some of the words that Alli knows:

Up
More
Cheers (yes, we like to clink our cups together and cheers and then drink)
Mommy
Daddy
Doggy (or Baggy, can't really tell)


And then there is this phrase:

"Ashes, Ashes, all fall down!"

I would say we are just guessing at that phrase as she walks around babbling it, but she did it in the swimming pool in Payson over the 4th of July weekend and I said "are you doing Ashes, Ashes?" and another mommy said "sounds like it to me".

And we think she is reciting some of her ABC's, in her own special way. :)


Tonight I let her explore her "independence". I decided to give her a bowl of baby food with the spoon and just let her feed herself while I made the rest of our real dinner. She actually did pretty good - dipping the spoon in the bowl and then putting it into her mouth. Of course, by the time I finished dinner prep and then went over to the table, I found she was also using it to paint, splatter the dog, and rub through her hair. :D Everyone got a bath after dinner, including the high chair.

But then she showed me just how smart she is. After bath I put her in her diaper but didn't put her jammies on - I left them on the floor of her bedroom. After playing for a while in her bedroom, then living room, then kitchen, she walked away into her room. I was still in the kitchen picking up and she came walking back with her jammies. I thought "Wow, she's decided she wants to go to bed? Or she's cold and knows this will warm her up?" But as I got her dressed a smell came to my nose and a new thought... "I pooped and I know that I need to be changed, so here are my clothes." I'm gonna guess it's the latter, which makes me pretty impressed at her understanding of things at (almost) 14 months old. So proud!

Asleep at the Wheel